Section on Public Health and Preventive Medicine Grand Rounds: Wealth and Health - Innovative Approaches to the Economic Determinants of Maternal and Child Health

Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate of the ten most populated US cities and over thirty percent of Philadelphia children live in poverty.  Relatedly, Philadelphia has higher infant morality rates than the national average. Moreover, there are profound racial health disparities in maternal and child health outcomes in Philadelphia.

Join the Section on Public Health and Preventative Medicine at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia for a multidisciplinary discussion on the connection between poverty and child and maternal health and highlight two innovative approaches, the CHOP Medical Financial Partnership and the Philly Joy Bank, a guaranteed income pilot for pregnant Philadelphians.

Panelists:

Stacey Kallem, MD, MSHP, is the Director of the Division of Maternal, Child, and Family Health at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and a primary care pediatrician. In this role, Dr. Kallem leads a multi-disciplinary team that aims to improve the health and well-being of Philadelphia’s mothers, infants and children with a focus on reducing racial health disparities. Under her leadership, the division has launched innovative new initiatives including a centralized intake system for maternal and infant home visiting programs as well as a citywide telelactation program. Dr. Kallem is also an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine. Previously, Dr. Kallem was a faculty member at CHOP PolicyLab where her research focused on focused on two-generational approaches for improving health and developmental outcomes in the early childhood period.

Lydia Seymour, B.S., works in Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s division of Maternal Child and Family Health as the Community Action Network (CAN) Coordinator. Prior to joining the health department, she worked in health management at Einstein Medical Center for over a decade. During that time, she was blessed to become a NICU mom spawning a great passion for motherhood and advocacy around the importance of black maternal health. This passion ignited; she joined the Philadelphia CAN community as a way to share her vision for change within black maternal and infant health. She began her journey with CAN as a lived experience expert in June 2020 later becoming one of the co chairs of the CAN Chronic Conditions workgroup before assuming her current role as coordinator. When Lydia is not working, her greatest joys in life include cooking, being outdoors and spending time with her husband and two children.

George Dalembert, MD, MSHP, is an attending physician in the Division of General Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Associate Director for the CHOP Center for Health Equity. He is also a Faculty Scholar at the CHOP PolicyLab and a Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. He serves as an Assistant Program Director for the CHOP Pediatrics Residency Program. His academic and research areas of interest are grounded in a passion for advancing health equity and include adolescent health and increasing patient/family engagement in the primary care setting. As founding Director of CHOP’s Medical Financial Partnership, he tackles poverty through innovative, cross-sector collaborations to address family needs. He engages in curricular design in implicit bias, institutional racism, microaggressions, and quality improvement, as well as teaching in the inpatient, ambulatory, and classroom settings for residents and medical students.

About the Section on Public Health and Preventive Medicine

The Section on Public Health & Preventive Medicine creates a forum for deliberating important issues in public health and disease prevention, and provides information for improving health policies. 

The Section brings together people from across the Philadelphia region and from diverse perspectives who care about improving health in the region.

**The views and opinions expressed in this Public Health Grand Rounds event are those of the speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, its membership, or its leadership.**